Why Texas could determine which party controls the Senate in 2027

Both history and current polls point to a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives next year. The U.S. Senate is another matter. With Republicans now holding a 53 to 47 majority, Democrats face the daunting task of defending their vulnerable seats while flipping four seats now held by Republicans.

Democratic leaders have regarded North Carolina and Maine as their best chances to make gains in the Senate and have identified races in independent-minded Alaska and Republican-leaning Ohio, where longtime senator Sherrod Brown is campaigning to regain the office he lost in 2024, as their best chances to win the two additional seats they will need for a majority.

The results in the March 3rd Texas primaries may lead Democrats to add the Lone Star State to their list of possibilities. State representative James Talarico, widely regarded as the Democrats’ strongest candidate for the general election, scored a solid 6-point victory over Jasmine Crockett, who represents Texas’s 30th congressional district in the House of Representatives.

On the other side of the aisle, four-term incumbent senator John Cornyn was forced into a runoff with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who finished within one point of Cornyn despite the numerous controversies that have dogged his public and personal life. Republicans now face an expensive and bitter three-month contest between a veteran traditional conservative in the mold of the two Bush presidents and a Tea Party-era insurgent who backed Donald Trump from the beginning. Meanwhile, Talarico can use this time to raise funds for a very costly general election contest and take his campaign on the road.

Pre-election survey research suggested that Talarico could run a strong general election race, and the way he won the nomination backs this up. Representing more than 40% of Texas’ population, Hispanics have become the crucial swing vote in the state’s elections. Although there are no exit polls for the Texas primaries, country-level evidence shows that Talarico performed especially well in this group. In Hispanic-dominated south and southwest Texas, as well as in San Antonio (Bexar County), he outperformed Crockett by huge margins.

The results in Travis County (Austin), one of the most liberal counties in Texas, were also noteworthy. The county’s electorate is dominated by whites (47.5%), most of whom are well-educated and liberal, and Hispanics (32.6%), while African Americans constitute only 7.5% of the total. Talarico beat Crockett in the county by more than 50 points, 75.6 % to 23.8%.

These results point to a key fact: unlike some other recent contests, the Texas Democratic primary was not a race between a moderate and a progressive, because Talarico is hard to categorize as a moderate. He supports a public health insurance option or Medicare buy-in for all Americans. He defends not only LGBTQ rights but also “gender-affirming care” for children. He favors term limits for Supreme Court justices and is open to expanding the size of the Court. He has criticized what he terms Israel’s “atrocities” in Palestine and “war crimes” in Gaza and opposes the sale of offensive weapons. A devout Christian who holds an advanced degree from a Presbyterian seminary, he fervently denounces “Christian nationalists” who, he says, have turned Jesus into a “gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist.”

Beyond the strong support that Talarico enjoys among Hispanics, his ability to mobilize voters is another source of Democratic optimism. Although both parties had hotly contested Senate primaries, the total vote for Democratic candidates exceeded the Republican total by about 200,000. In the five Hispanic-dominated counties listed in Table 1, Democratic turnout exceeded Republican turnout by more than two to one. If this pattern persists through the general election, Talarico will do much better than typical Democrats in statewide races, and the Republican House redistricting plan, which relies heavily on sustaining the strong Hispanic support Donald Trump received in 2024, could be in trouble.¹

This said, Texas has emerged in the past half-century as one of the pillars of the modern Republican Party, and it has been more than three decades since a Democrat won a statewide race. But as we’ve seen before, candidates matter.

If Sen. Cornyn wins the Republican runoff, the odds are that Talarico will fall short in November. If Attorney General Paxton prevails, several surveys suggest that Talarico would have an even chance of winning the general election. The bottom line: control of the Senate in 2027 could turn on the nominee Texas Republicans choose this May.